What the Planned Parenthood union contract tells us about the changing abortion landscape

Since the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling in 2022, which gave states the right to ban abortion, Planned Parenthood workers in Minnesota and surrounding states have been navigating a new landscape — that includes patients having to travel to receive abortion care.

Workers in the region have been trying to address their changing workplace conditions through negotiations for their first union contract. Last week, Planned Parenthood North Central States workers ratified that contract last week. They securing increased wages and other workplace protections.

It was “really a fight to get what we did,” said Shay Gingras, a senior research coordinator for Planned Parenthood who was also a part of the bargaining team. “We feel like we deserve a lot more than what we're getting out of this first contract.”

The three-year agreement is now in effect and will cover more than 400 unionized members at PPNCS. Their first contract comes after workers unionized in 2022 and took 37 bargaining sessions to complete.

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To hear the full interview with Gingras, click on the audio player above. The following transcription has been edited for length and clarity.

Most recent data from the Department of Health shows a 20 percent increase in induced abortions for 2022 nationwide. What’s it been like for you and the patients at Planned Parenthood?

It’s been really tough. You know, here in Minnesota, we’ve got a lot of protections for abortion access, and that’s really great for us and our patients. But Planned Parenthood North Central States covers five states. It covers Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and both of the Dakotas.

We have a lot of patients traveling in from out of state to Minnesota to seek abortion care, not just from the other states in our affiliate but from other states across the country. And so, the waiting periods for patients seeking abortions are much longer. That means longer waits for people in Minnesota seeking an abortion because more of those appointments are being taken by out of state folks, but also longer waits for those patients traveling from out of state.

So, it’s tough for patients and it’s tough for us, the staff who provide that care, you know, having really full schedules and really stressed patients who are overcoming a lot of barriers to access this care.

What does the work look like for your coworkers who are in our four neighboring states and are not able to provide abortions?

Conditions are really hostile there. I have a friend who’s a coworker in Nebraska and she talks about, you know, how the protesters know her children’s names and call out to her as she’s entering the building for her work day.

So, it’s really just — it’s a lot of stress to work in that sort of hostile environment. There are even more barriers for our staff and our patients in the other states.

What were the things that you wanted to make sure were included in this first contract?

Our number one was higher wages. This is really difficult work that we do. It’s really, really mentally exhausting and emotionally exhausting. There’s a lot of emotional labor involved in providing abortion care to patients and we want to be adequately compensated for that work.

And then it was really important to us to make progress on health care and get better coverage for health care — get better employee-employer cost sharing of health care. So those were two of our main priorities for this first contract.

Why was it important or necessary to make these changes?

Especially in the wake of the Dobbs ruling, it’s really difficult to provide abortion care in this political landscape. And we’re seeing a lot of staff leaving our affiliate — really excellent, qualified, valuable staff with institutional knowledge leaving the affiliate.

Without the union contract, I think that there weren’t a lot of protections or benefits in place for our staff that were making them feel like they were being fairly compensated and were being valued to continue to do this work.

Did the people who left stay in health care? Where did they go?

Good question. It really varies. I do think that a lot of people stayed in health care but started to do things that were a little more neutral. I know of a nurse who left abortion care and is now a school nurse. And as passionate as all of our staff are about it, sometimes it can be really difficult and it can certainly be easier to provide a type of care that’s less stigmatized.

What did you want to see in negotiations that didn’t make it through?

One of our biggest things is, prior to the union contract, we had an abortion pay differential for staff that provide abortion care that offered them some extra dollars per hour for providing a really difficult type of care, that’s super stigmatized, and comes with all sorts of unique challenges.

So, we bargained in this contract to try to maintain that abortion differential for those staff and, unfortunately, we weren’t able to keep that and so that’s a huge loss.

Yeah, it was really a fight to get what we did and we feel like we deserve a lot more than what we’re getting out of this first contract. And we’re really hopeful that in future negotiations, we can continue to get more out of this process.